Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Open Palestine

This year Israel is celebrating its 70th anniversary. It therefore seems like an appropriate time to remember what existed before the creation of the State of Israel. 70 years ago 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes to create a Jewish state. Over the last 70 years Palestinian villages have been destroyed or renamed and the map has been almost entirely redrawn.

Palestine Open Maps allows you to browse historic maps from the period of the British Mandate of Palestine and to view information about both the present day locations and those erased in the last 70 years. At the moment the platform allows you to explore vintage maps from 1880 and from the 1940's & 1950's.

This is very much an alpha release of Palestine Open Maps. The release notes say that you can add data about "present and erased localities' but none of the layers under the "Change of status since 1945' heading appear to be working. The split screen option also seems to be a work in progress, which means you can't yet compare the vintage maps with the present map of the area side-by-side.